Democracy: The Choice Between a Far-Right Demagogue or a Corporate Criminal

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23/06/2016 10:08 BST
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Updated
15/06/2017 10:12 BST

As Bernie Sanders' brave campaign looks to have come to an end, Americans are left with a choice of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump - a nightmare for the left. You have to wonder how in the self confessed 'greatest democracy in the word', tens of millions of voters are being left alienated by a rigged system which favours Establishment candidates and carry on forcing the political spectrum to the right.

Now, Trump, who has been exposed countless times by moderate and liberal media alike, is both an idiot and a genius simultaneously. His social policies on immigration and Islam are taken up purely to appeal to the significant portion of the electorate that think conservatively, or, more likely, are a product of the right wing media. Political scientists claim that traditionally left or right wing parties should move towards the centre in order to claim the media vote; Trump, on the other hand, has tapped into the surprisingly large right. Economically, Trump, a (dynastic) billionaire, has pledged to cut corporation tax and has flip-flopped on minimum wage.

However, all this attention on Trump's shortcomings takes the focus away on the real crook here; Hillary Clinton. The notion that we must elect Hillary to prevent Trump is not only defeatist, but undemocratic. None of these candidates represent the overwhelming will of the American people. Firstly, if we look at the primaries themselves, we can see that Mrs Clinton stumbled over the line (well, not yet) with the entire media and DNC behind her, clouded by accusations of voter suppression, false pre-pledging of superdelegates, and of course, the ongoing FBI investigation into her actions. As the primaries went on, her momentum sharply dropped - had there been more open primaries, it is very likely that we could be talking about the much unfancied Sanders as the potential nominee.

If we look at Hillary's top 10 donors to her presidential campaign, among the list lie firms such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, banks which she notoriously gave speeches to for fees exceeding $225,000. Ever since the creation of the Federal Reserve, banks have had a great influence over the US government - and to paraphrase Cenk Uygur of TYT, why would banks donate to Hillary if not for favourable policies? Simply put, it's modern day bribery, and a move that will further detriment the American people in favour of the big banks.

Clinton's involvement in the Libya scandal as Secretary of State forbodes a continuation of destructive US imperialism and destabilisation of certain nations. This, of course, is in addition to her vote in favour of the 2004 Iraq war. Her reasons for toppling Gaddafi, as emails released by Wikileaks show, were, naturally, for gold and oil.

Finally, we can come onto why Mrs Clinton is being investigated - the email scandal. Having used a private server for federal correspondence, one can look at the hypocrisy regarding Edward Snowden's imprisonment - having released information for the good of the people, Snowden was imprisoned, while Hillary's strange decision to use a private server has not stopped her path to the White House. And I'm sure we've heard quite enough about the Benghazi scandal. We cannot view Clinton as a viable alternative; simply a lesser, or even equal, evil.

Americans, through a lack of decent candidates, mindless voting and superdelegates, have ended up in a situation where tens of millions simply don't want to vote for either candidate. Let me just leave you with this quote from Douglas Adams' novel 'So long, and thanks for all the fish'.

'On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in.'